“Ghosting” is defined in the urban dictionary as “quietly disappearing from someone you’ve met on an online dating site.” I would argue that it’s not just for those people you’ve met on dating sites. I’ve been ghosted by people I thought were friends who just stopped responding to messages. I’ve also been guilty of doing the same thing. To be fair, on both sides of the situation it’s happened with people that I had been close to but had drifted away from over the years so, while not pleasant it wasn’t devastating.

Recently I have seen a guy that I photographed several years ago in my area. It turns out that he lives literally around the corner from me. He popped up on my Grindr and he used to live a good hour away and I hadn’t seen him in years. So I sent him a message and promptly got blocked. I now see him at the local pub and in the street but he pretends I don’t exist. Now of course I am not getting any answers on why this has happened. He’d have to speak to me to give me the answers. We’ve never had a falling out and while we’ve never been wildly close I always thought we got on.

My best guess is that, knowing what I do about him, he is one of those guys that immerses himself so totally into a relationship and even though we don’t have a sexual past, I represent a time when he was in a different relationship and a different time in life so therefore the boyfriend must not know about me. It’s only a guess. I’ve had people do that to me before. A guy I had met years ago and hung out with on the nude beach, again nothing sexual, once at a pub he pretended he’d never met me because he was with someone new.

Can we all just accept that we have a past and no matter how sordid or completely innocent it may be, it all goes towards making us who we are?

martin

Many years ago I had a casual affair with a man whom I truly admired for his professional achievements. As now, I was then married. He wasn’t. Years later I met him again at a purely social event. “I’m married now,” he said. And that was it. I wasn’t being friendly with him for sexual reasons. I really liked him and enjoyed his company for the man he was and was prepared to reopen a purely friendly relationship. He reiterated his “I am married” comment and that was it. Pity, because I think we could have had a very good, non-sexual friendship.

Colin - Nude Melbourne

Currently you have JavaScript disabled. In order to post comments, please make sure JavaScript and Cookies are enabled, and reload the page.Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your browser.